Once upon a time, saving your bits meant punching holes in floppies
- Reference: 1772631605
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/03/04/chen_floppy_disks/
- Source link:
The vast majority of removable media today consists of flash drives, some with a write-protect switch or a software setting to prevent accidental writes. In the days of yore, however, notches and tabs ruled, though their implementation was not always consistent.
Chen began with the eight-inch floppy disk, widely [1]attributed to IBM in 1971, which stored around 80 kilobytes. "The write protect notch was at the top of the leading edge," [2]Chen wrote .
[3]
"The presence of a notch made the floppy write-protected, so you started with a write-enabled floppy, and if you wanted to protect it, you punched a notch at just the right spot."
[4]
[5]
The 5.25-inch disk superseded the eight-inch floppy. Here, the write-protect notch was on the right edge, near the top. "The presence of a notch made the floppy write-enabled," recalled Chen. "To protect it, you covered the notch with a sticker. So it was really a write-enable notch, not a write-protect notch."
Chen doesn't mention one popular modification for 5.25-inch disks in the days before double-sided drives became ubiquitous. As well as the notches, it was possible to take a disk and use a hole punch to create a " [6]flippy disk ," in which a user flipped the disk to use the other side (e.g. on a Texas Instruments 99/4A). It required a hole punch, a sacrificial disk, and, in this writer's experience, a fair amount of teenage optimism.
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The advent of the 3.5-inch floppy simplified things, introducing a sliding switch on the underside of the disk. An open hole meant the disk could be written, while closing the hole protected the disk.
Then there was the compact cassette – familiar to many a computer user of the 1980s. Break the tab at the top of the cassette to protect the tape. Pop some Sellotape over it, and writing was possible.
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It is more than a decade since Sony, one of the last major manufacturers, finally pulled the plug on floppy disk production, although supplies of the media [12]can still be found .
Chen's career at Microsoft dates back to when the company's software shipped on floppy disks. The installation media for Windows 3.1 came on half a dozen disks, while Windows 95 required 13, [13]according to the veteran engineer.
It's worth pausing to wonder how many Windows installation disks were repurposed by users thanks to a flick of the write-protect tab or the addition of a write-enable notch. ®
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[1] https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/261
[2] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20260303-00/?p=112104
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aahlNRdzBnmiQlgA9oJaagAAAcc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aahlNRdzBnmiQlgA9oJaagAAAcc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aahlNRdzBnmiQlgA9oJaagAAAcc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://archive.org/details/1981-03-compute-magazine/page/70/mode/2up
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/11/chen_weezer_happy_days_windows/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/20/chen_shift_reboot_windows/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/01/microsofts_approach_to_customer_service/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/28/chen_windows_text_translation/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aahlNRdzBnmiQlgA9oJaagAAAcc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/20/floppy_disk_business/
[13] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050819-10
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
3.5" is the wrong way round
"The advent of the 3.5-inch floppy simplified things, introducing a sliding switch on the underside of the disk. An open hole meant the disk could be written, while closing the hole protected the disk."
Pretty sure it was the other way round - open hole meant write-protect.
Re: 3.5" is the wrong way round
I was just about to post this. It's been a while, but if I picture in my mind the act of closing the hole on a 3.5", I get a feeling of "danger, data at risk". The opposite if I imagine opening it. I absolutely can't remember reading this anywhere, but it seems to have become a low-level instinct.
Re: 3.5" is the wrong way round
Yeah, that is correct. An open hole meant write-protect.
Here is the logic... An OEM software install disk had the open hole, and it also did NOT have the shutter to slide over it. An early form of software assurance that the contents on the disk could not be tampered with.
create a "flippy disk,"
I think the 3.0 inch diskettes used by early Amstrad (Z80/CP/M) machines were by design "flippy" disks.
They must have had two separate right·protect tabs - one for each side.
I vaguely recall that I could attach these drives to a MSDOS 3.x PC and read and write the disks. A useful Aussie DOS program at that time, PC-Alien, could read just about any DOS or CP/M format.
Re: create a "flippy disk,"
I was a teenage optimist!
Also still have my lil red single hole punch sitting in my desk drawer. For reasons that probably ceased to exist 30 years ago. And still has some remnants of 5.25" disks in its crumb tray. But memories of an ill-spent youth with a pair of 1541 drives on my Commodore 64. Then thanks to living near a couple of by USAF bases, part of an international crime syndicate* swapping games with their airforce brats. Which I also remember being fun because some British developed games didn't get a US release, and vice-versa.
But didn't take a lot of optimism, just one of those hole punches and some care. And noticing WH Smiths sold single and double sided TDK disks, with the double sided being nearly double the price. And the difference was that magic second notch on the left. Then realising the companies that made the floppies pretty much all made the magnetic bits double sided anyway & only the sleeve, packaging and price was different. Can't remember ever having a problem, even with cheap bulk floppies. Can't remember if I ever had a C128 and 1571, but think I jumped from C64 to Atari ST, and 5.25" was no more.
*Trenchcoats and miniguns! Fun times!
I was once working on a contract which had data submitted on floppies. I think there was an opportunity use the then rare email as an alternative but that might have been a different phase or something - mists of time. Anyway, it was a useful source of floppy disks once the data had been copied over to the server. I don't think any of the submitters ever bohered to write-protect them.
how many Windows installation disks were repurposed
As I recall it, very few. You jealously guarded your installation discs because you knew you'd need them, sooner or later...
Re: how many Windows installation disks were repurposed
indeed! I've still got mine (3.11 that is , not 95), plus the DOS6.22 set, just in case ;)
Re: how many Windows installation disks were repurposed
I repurposed mine by 3D-printing some corners and a stand and making a nice desk decor item.
I did the same for the Macintosh 7 and for some generic 5.25 disks.
Old fart icon self-explanatory.
pencils
This is getting dangerously close to one of those social media posts with a picture of a cassette tape and a pencil, asking what the link is.
Write protected cassettes
Back in the 1980s, I was working at a shop repairing TVs and hi-fi.
A new Philips radio/cassette player came out and was one of the first whose cassette mechanics were controlled by a single "control IC". This set the position of a big mechanical wheel where different positions of that wheel determined whether the mechanism was in stop, fast-forward, rewind, play or record mode. The mechanism wasn't allowed to go into record mode if it detected that the tab on the cassette itself had been removed (which they were for all commercial pre-recorded tapes).
This was all very well until the chip developed a subtle fault, which it did with great regularity. The fault meant that, when you selected play mode, the wheel would spin to the play position, overshoot into the record position for a second, before returning to the play position, whereupon it would play the tape as normal. However, that momentary overshoot would erase a small portion of the tape (no more than a second's worth) EVEN if the cassette had been write-protected! So, you ended up with a tape with tiny patches of silence! What a brilliant design - not!
Good memories of simpler times
> "It required a hole punch, a sacrificial disk, and, in this writer's experience, a fair amount of teenage optimism."
Did that, done that. I remember going in 50/50 with a buddy to buy a box of bulk generic floppies. Had a nice little hole punch tool that made the proper notch at the right location - even square cut it too. Lunch break & "Computers class" were nothing but a big pirate fest, copying whatever each of us could leach from other kids we knew. Copy ][+ was the preferred tool, but Locksmith was the go-to for the hard to copy disks. Then go home and try to figure out what I had copied and how it worked.
Although I don't remember ever calling them a "flippy" disk. "Double Sided" was more the preferred term.
I've still got those disks around somewhere. I wonder if any of them would still work....? The icon seems fitting.
Re: Good memories of simpler times
I used a pirated copy of Locksmith and Copy][+ in my early days. I eventually purchased Copy][+ (v4.2) because it was so useful. I also had the punch tool. Fit nicely over the corner of the floppy and always got the hole right.
I also remember copying a program by hand out of a computer mag at the time, in BASIC, into my Apple ][e that would copy protect floppies. It worked so well neither Copy][+ or Locksmith would copy it. I had a lot of fun reversing the process in the program to remove the protection.
Some installation programs, to prevent people from installing software on too many computers would want to update the first disk with license details. Was always pretty simple to just copy the disk before doing the installation.
Also used to drill a hole in 3.5" floppy disk
to convert from cheaper/available 720kb to high-capacity 1.44Mb.
Necessity is as they say, the mother of all inventions. Oh, and laziness too.
Re: Also used to drill a hole in 3.5" floppy disk
I remember this - weren't the 720 ones called Double Density, and the 1.44 ones High Density? And also required a fair amount of similar teenage optimism as the magnetic surface wasn't good enough to reliably write and subsequently retrieve data. Was fine for transferring stuff, but not so useful for storing stuff and hoping to get it back...
Re: Also used to drill a hole in 3.5" floppy disk
In the end, I used a blade to delicately cut the circuit directly on the drive so it would consider all 3"½ floppies as HD, with or without a hole. It was easier, because some friends had already done something similar and they regularly lent me stacks of unconventionally formatted floppies containing backup of interesting new programs. For educational purpose only, of course.
Our first box of OS/2 shipped with 5 1/4 floppies that were all factory write-protected. Smashing, except that Install Disk 1 needed to write config info back to disc.Scissors came in handy.